NOTE: To get the full "Woodcut" effect, you'll need to view this at full size. Another interesting project: I needed to create a "historical" woodcut image for a game book that sources information about 20th Century warfare in Africa. The subject is the controversial Edi Amin of Uganda. I'm not interested in any political commentary on him: for me, this was strictly an art project for an historical miniatures game. All work is done in Photoshop CS5, with the final version "created" with Flaming Pear's India Ink filter using its BASKET WEAVE setting. It's an old filter, but still a good one. When I first used the filter, I wasn't impressed because the results weren't very good. But, with a little tinkering, I figured out that -- like any filter -- it will not create "instant art" for you. You have to work at it to create a starting image that will play to the filter's strengths. In this case, you are playing with grayscale images and you want to have dark gray areas, oversaturated blacks, and lighter areas to get a nice basket weave pattern. This is NOT the finished image, but rather a strip showing the process I used to create it. The first image is the original, public domain photo provided by the publisher. Note the microphones in front of him. As you can see in the second image, I edited those out using a very rough hand (obvious paint strokes on the coat). I also used levels to increase the contrast and then used a combination of the burn and dodge tools to darken areas and add highlights. The process is actually tedious, as you: 1. Make an edit to the image 2. Run the Flaming Pear filter that has already been set up (in this case, Basket Weave with the Line set to Thin) 3. Look at the results, decide what other edits you will want 4. Undo the filter so you have the grayscale photo back 5. Continue making light/dark edits 6. Run the filter again, check results 7. Undo and make more edits... And so on. Using the filter is a "destructive" process, so you always want to keep an extra copy of latest edits around, just in case. Because once you've committed to the Woodcut look, that's it. You really can't go back and edit. In this case, I actually wanted two levels of detail on him. If you'll notice, his jacket has much thicker lines and a coarser texture than his face. To get this, I made all the edits on the base photo and then duplicated it: I ran the filter with a "thin" setting for the face, and then on the other layer I ran the filter with a "medium" setting. I then used layer masks to combine the two images so that the face has more detail than the jacket (this is an old art technique that goes back centuries: using rough strokes for clothes and backgrounds to draw attention to the face, which will use a smaller brush and have more detail). A few things to think about: When using this filter, use bold brush strokes and don't be afraid that the edits are not smooth. You're not editing a photo, you're painting a piece of art (note the sloppy brush strokes on his cheek in the middle image). You must work BIG with this filter. I find that images smaller than 2000 pixels do not work well with this filter because even the "thin" settings will be too rough. It doesn't resize very well, so if possible, try to get it close to the published size. I like to work at least 200% of its final published size. When you do resize, things tend to clump up a bit (the original has more detail on the side of his face: here it's just a very dark line). When finished, you'll probably want to outline it to give some of the white areas more definition (like the other side of his face and ear). I hope you like this explanation of the process. I have no connection to the makers of this filter, but they have provided me with a valuable tool for my work and I'm very appreciative of that and just thought a few of you might be interested in my process used in creating "historic-looking" artwork like this.